Artwork: Platform Diving (Deborah Brown)

From nycsubway.org

Seven mosaic murals along the platforms. The mosaics depict an underwater subway, with flooded stations, trains, and tunnels, and sea creature passengers floating on the platform and in the trains. Some of the mosaics are: seals and an underwater platform with sea creatures waiting for the train (northbound side), and turtle, dolphin, octopus, squid, and a train filled with sea creature passengers (southbound side). The individual panels are called: "Eye Opener", "Family Outing", "Morning Rush", "Night Shift", "Platform Diving", "Straphangers", "Turtles Ride for Free".

The work was commissioned by the Arts for Transit program of the Metropolitan Transit Authority. For artists like Brown, to participate in such projects is to subject their hard-won twentieth century creative autonomy to unfamiliar pressures. How, for example does a painter preserve a traditional fine arts identity while trying to satisfy a myriad of interests, each demanding cooperation? Working closely with architects, building committees, representatives of local communities, confined to parameters set by construction schedules, material limitations and site specifications, artists working on public projects have indeed entered a brave new world. And yet they not only survive with their unique sensibilities intact, they flourish, and in many respects have redefined through their independent thinking our concept of public art. For it is precisely the artist's retention of personal expression that often brings success to these projects. Source: kingsborough.edu.